I have a few questions about verbs, because while writing my vocabulary / flashcard program, I have gotten quite a bit ahead of myself. So...

1) Are there *ANY* verbs that have 1st person dual conjugations? Smyth and Betts & Henry give me the idea that there are not, but I want to make sure. Databases don't handle exceptions very well, so if there are *any* verbs that have 1st person duals, I need to know about it.

2) Following is a list of all possible combinations of voice, mood and tense in Greek verbs. Am I missing anything? Is there *ANY* verb that has a combination that I missed?

Paul wrote:I actually think that the first person dual does crop up once or twice somewhere in Homer. But I will check when I get home.

Thanks.

Paul wrote:I too have written this kind of vocabulary program. I would recommend that you allow for second aorists, second perfects, and second pluperfects.

Ok, this second aorist, etc., stuff is way beyond my level. So I need to ask some questions. Can a verb have both a first and a second aorist (perfect, pluperfect) form? Or is this something where a verb can fall into one category or the other, but not both?

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

I'm afraid there are some verbs that have two forms, like kalew's future is either kalesw or kalw (sorry, just can't be bothered with the greek font right now). Same with exw, it also has two different forms for the future.
Deidw's perfect is either dedoika or dedia and euriskw's perfect can be eurhka or hurhka (not a huge difference, though).
There are other examples...

Emma_85 wrote:I'm afraid there are some verbs that have two forms, like kalew's future is either kalesw or kalw (sorry, just can't be bothered with the greek font right now). Same with exw, it also has two different forms for the future.Deidw's perfect is either dedoika or dedia and euriskw's perfect can be eurhka or hurhka (not a huge difference, though).There are other examples...

Are they interchangable? Or are they used in different ways?

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

Lex wrote:Are they interchangable? Or are they used in different ways?

They are not usually interchangeable. Generally the first aorist (or perfect) will be transitive or causative and the second will be intransitive.

So [face=spionic]e)/bhn[/face] "I went", but [face=spionic]e)/bhsa[/face] "I made (someone) go."

Do you plan to focus on a particular dialect of Greek? There are some verbs that have three separate aorist forms in Epic. For example, [face=spionic]kixa/nw[/face] "come upon, arrive at" has one first aorist [face=spionic]e)kixhsa/mhn[/face], one thematic second aorist [face=spionic]e)/kixon[/face], and one athematic (or root) aorist [face=spionic]e)ki/xhn[/face].

Regarding the 1st.dual verb forms, Monro says there is one possible example in the Iliad (23.485), but it may be grammarians getting imaginative. West rejects it from his recent Iliad edition. I look forward to Paul's report. Monro isn't exactly current scholarship.

Last edited by annis on Wed Oct 15, 2003 9:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

At least, the meaning is the same. The heart of the matter is that the "second" forms are in principle OLDER than the "first" ones. "Second aorists" belong to a time were "I go" and "I went" were felt as different actions, expressed by different verbs. The "first" aorists appeared later, it is a more synthetic way of expression : e)poi/hsa "is still" the verb poie/w.

annis wrote:Regarding the 1st.dual verb forms, Monro says there is one possible example in the Iliad (23.485), but it may be grammarians getting imaginative. West rejects it from his recent Iliad edition. I look forward to Paul's report. Monro isn't exactly current scholarship.

Hi Gang,

William, I am charmed at the prospect of 'my report'. Monro is the very source I was thinking of earlier in the day! The only thing I can add is that Smyth does mention 3 poetic forms of 1st person dual, including the form named by Monro.

Hmmm.... OK, in another post, 2nd aorists, perfects and pluperfects were mentioned. Now you mention an athematic (root) aorist. Are there also athematic perfects and pluperfects? And in what voices and moods do any of these tenses apply? In short, how should I extend that huge list that I posted earlier?

annis wrote:Regarding the 1st.dual verb forms, Monro says there is one possible example in the Iliad (23.485), but it may be grammarians getting imaginative. West rejects it from his recent Iliad edition. I look forward to Paul's report. Monro isn't exactly current scholarship.

One possible example? Whew! No 1st person dual in my program.

All this help is greatly appreciated. (That goes out to everyone who has responded, not just William.)

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

Paul wrote:William, I am charmed at the prospect of 'my report'. Monro is the very source I was thinking of earlier in the day! The only thing I can add is that Smyth does mention 3 poetic forms of 1st person dual, including the form named by Monro.

Now I wish I had a copy of Sihler. I should put that on my wishlist and he and Denniston can snuggle for a while.

For Lex's purpose, I'd say ignore this form.

I would agree.

P.S. - I love Monro. He may not be current, but he often has interesting insights and analyses that I've not seen in other grammars.

True, and my copy gets a lot of work, but some things make more sense in light of more recent dialect discoveries, especially the Mycenaean stuff.

Lex wrote:*sigh* This language is immense. I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into.

I think any sort of program that has to think about a highly inflecting language is going to be a bit vexing. I cannot imagine what the database structures Perseus uses look like.

Hmmm.... OK, in another post, 2nd aorists, perfects and pluperfects were mentioned. Now you mention an athematic (root) aorist. Are there also athematic perfects and pluperfects?

Perfects and pluperfects are basically only athematic, though this is most obvious in the middle.

And in what voices and moods do any of these tenses apply? In short, how should I extend that huge list that I posted earlier?

I'm not sure a list is the best approach. Though I must admit that my brain starts to itch when I try to think about it usefully.

I don't know how you're programming this and what your data structures are looking like, but I think I'd go for a verb analysis encoding that has slots for all the possible variations, one byte each:

|tense|voice|mood|person|number|...dialect note?|...?

And then file each form under a head-word (like in a dictionary), which would allow you to keep track of the fact that 1) the future of [face=spionic]fe/rw[/face] is [face=spionic]oi)/sw[/face], and 2) that the Attic aorist is [face=spionic]h)/negka[/face] and the Epic one is [face=spionic]h)/neika[/face], as well as 3) allow the possibility of including the periphrastic perfect forms (participle + [face=spionic]ei)mi/[/face]).

Two of the aorists William points out ( [face=SPIonic]e)ki/xhn, e)ki/xon[/face] ) are 2nd aorist indicative active. It might be best for your program to treat one as a variant form of the other.

I was considering that. All I would have to do is make the fields long enough to accomodate several variations, separated by commas or something. But if they are used differently, then I am not sure that's the best approach, from the user's point of view.

You say that both of the above words are 2nd aorist. William said that one was 2nd (thematic) aorist, and the other was athematic (root) aorist. So the athematic (root) aorist is a form of 2nd aorist?

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

And in what voices and moods do any of these tenses apply? In short, how should I extend that huge list that I posted earlier?

I'm not sure a list is the best approach. Though I must admit that my brain starts to itch when I try to think about it usefully.

I don't know how you're programming this and what your data structures are looking like, but I think I'd go for a verb analysis encoding that has slots for all the possible variations, one byte each:

|tense|voice|mood|person|number|...dialect note?|...?

And then file each form under a head-word (like in a dictionary), which would allow you to keep track of the fact that 1) the future of [face=spionic]fe/rw[/face] is [face=spionic]oi)/sw[/face], and 2) that the Attic aorist is [face=spionic]h)/negka[/face] and the Epic one is [face=spionic]h)/neika[/face], as well as 3) allow the possibility of including the periphrastic perfect forms (participle + [face=spionic]ei)mi/[/face]).

Just some thinking from a Unix geek.

Well, since I have a database already at my disposal, I decided to flatten the five byte-long codes you mention into the list I presented earlier (except that my list actually includes every combination of person and number as well), in a separate support table. Then I have a table with the headwords in it, as you suggested. So [face=SPIonic]lu/w[/face], for instance, would have an entry in the headword table. Another table, the conjugation table, would have all the possible conjugations of [face=SPIonic]lu/w[/face], each of which would point back to the headword table, and would also have a field with a number pointing to a row in the support table, indicating that this particular conjugation is perfect subjunctive active, 3rd person plural, or whatever. By flattening your codes into one support table, I only need to keep one extra field in the conjugation table. Also, the support table will already have the name of the conjugation completely spelled out; no further coding necessary.

I'm still more than a bit confused about all this 2nd this and root that business. I know that if I just put in the time and study more, I will eventually get it, but that means further delaying the finish of my program, which was intended to help me to study more! A classical Catch 22. Perhaps I will just have to leave my design as it is now (not taking into consideration 2nd this and that), and hope that incorporating them into my design later doesn't break anything too badly.

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

Wow, I sat down last night and went through the indexes of Goodwin's Grammar and White's First Book, and I think I have enough of a handle on 1st's and 2nd's now. Here's what my understanding is now. There is a:

1st aorist system, which includes 1st aorist in both active and middle.
2nd aorist system, which includes 2nd aorist in both active and middle.
1st perfect system, which includes 1st perfect and 1st pluperfect, in active.
2nd perfect system, which includes 2nd perfect and 2nd pluperfect, in active.
1st passive system, which includes 1st aorist and future, in passive.
2nd passive system, which includes 2nd aorist and future, in passive.

Where a verb has both 1sts and 2nds, they can have different meanings (transitive vs. intransitive), so those I want to handle separately in my program. But the 2nd aorist and the root aorist are used the same, so the root aorist doesn't have to be handled separately.

Does this sounds reasonable, or am I still confused?

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

Lex wrote:Where a verb has both 1sts and 2nds, they can have different meanings (transitive vs. intransitive), so those I want to handle separately in my program. But the 2nd aorist and the root aorist are used the same, so the root aorist doesn't have to be handled separately.

Does this sounds reasonable, or am I still confused?

It depends on what you want to do with these names.

If they will be used just to help beginners learn how the verb is classified then this is probably fine.

This will not work if you plan to generate conjugations from these names. The root aorists are conjugated differently, which makes me grumpy about them being classified with 2nd aorists generically.

If they will be used just to help beginners learn how the verb is classified then this is probably fine.

This will not work if you plan to generate conjugations from these names. The root aorists are conjugated differently, which makes me grumpy about them being classified with 2nd aorists generically.

The program will be as dumb as I am regarding morphology, so it will not know how to generate conjugations. It will only store the conjugations according to the classifications. It's basically just an electronic flashcard system, with some knowledge of paradigms built in.

I could easily enough make the root aorists separate from the 2nd, but I'm not sure to which voices the root aorist can apply, and I don't want to bog down the program with conjugations that can't exist. That would confuse beginners more than help them.

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

Lex wrote:I could easily enough make the root aorists separate from the 2nd, but I'm not sure to which voices the root aorist can apply, and I don't want to bog down the program with conjugations that can't exist.

First, 2nd and root aorists are all used the same. The classification only says how conjugation happens (and implies something about the verb stem), so all of these have the usual mood/voice/person/number combinations.

annis wrote:The classification only says how conjugation happens (and implies something about the verb stem), so all of these have the usual mood/voice/person/number combinations.

I hoped that was the case, but I wasn't sure. And if I assumed, I was sure that some strange rule would crop up that root aorist never occurs in the middle voice, or some such. Thank you very much for your help.

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

annis wrote:I don't know how you're programming this and what your data structures are looking like, but I think I'd go for a verb analysis encoding that has slots for all the possible variations, one byte each:

|tense|voice|mood|person|number|...dialect note?|...?

I had to ditch the list idea, and go with something like this. The list indexing logic was getting too ugly for words, and God forbid the list ever changed!

About dialects... What different dialects are commonly encountered? I'm even weaker on dialects that the other aspects of Greek.

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!